Pulitzer Prize books link

http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat

especially interesting is the history and General non fiction to me

http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/General-Nonfiction

http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/History

Belief in hell and heaven

One is asked to be pious and religious to reach heaven or else will be transported to hell after death. But our present life on earth has turned into hell. How will the almighty greet us in heaven when we cannot handle ourselves on earth and take care of this land? If we cannot take care of earth we are not fit to be in heaven. We need to first make earth a peace land to be eligible to heaven. We have to reconcile our differences and learn to accept people of a different beliefs. We need to show the Almighty that we know how to love everything on earth.

stink of death

I smell the stink of death everywhere
Death is unpredictable and a great leveler
Earth is the place for this drama
man the protagonist and death the enemy
Death is the usual winner and man the loser
One feels as if all conditions on earth
favor the tactics and ruse of death.

you are given only some time to achieve
and enjoy spurts of happiness meanwhile
As long as you live on this piece of universe
death haunts you as your shadow.
What can be done to escape this suffering?
You may die of disease, mental agony,
accident of nature or man.
Death is everywhere and every day.
Yet man treats death as a distant relative
though hears its name does not bother
to know more about it or know it.
Death is born along with life
as a shadow it sleeps with man
on his cradle and follows till the grave.
Death is body's constant challenge.

Amid the loss of lives, suffering and war
some hope for some great power to save
But suffering continues and continues unabated
Seems as if there is no end to man's suffering.
What can be done to escape this suffering?

I see some artists, musicians,bards,
scientists fighting the shadows of death on earth
and to lift the darkness
and to bring unearthly joy into life.

Man cannot escape the pinch
of other human and animal suffering.
I want to embody the goddess of happiness
on this land of suffering and death
Lift the torch of bliss on this land of suffering
Lift the spirit of the suffering man
With my energy and aspiration
bring smile on the lips of the dying man.

One feels as if earth were made
to be the land of the dead
Life struggles the earth's catastrophes
life struggles the ignorance of man
Life suffers the war and hatred
On this land of death
shall we sow the seeds of bliss
I shall embody the goddess of bliss.
Replace the stink of death
with the fragrance of rose.

Excellent interview Trilok Gurtu

Trilok Gurtu

Continued

Her hand's deflecting and retarding weight
Is laid on the mystic evolution's curve:
The tortuous line of her deceiving mind
The Gods see not and man is impotent;
Oppressing the God-spark within the soul
She forces back to the beast the human fall.
Yet in her formidable instinctive mind
She feels the One grow in the heart of Time
And sees the Immortal shine through the human mould.
Alarmed for her rule and full of fear and rage
She prowls around each light that gleams through the dark
Casting its ray from the spirit's lonely tent,
Hoping to enter with fierce stealthy tread
And in the cradle slay the divine Child.
Incalculable are her strength and ruse;
Her touch is a fascination and a death;
She kills her victim with his own delight;
Even Good she makes a hook to drag to Hell.
For her the world runs to its agony.
Often the pilgrim on the Eternal's road
Ill-lit from clouds by the pale moon of Mind,
Or in devious byways wandering alone,
Or lost in deserts where no path is seen,
Falls overpowered by her lion leap,
A conquered captive under her dreadful paws.
Intoxicated by a burning breath
And amorous grown of a destroying mouth,
Once a companion of the sacred Fire,
The mortal perishes to God and Light,
An Adversary governs heart and brain,
A Nature hostile to the Mother-Force.
The self of life yields up its instruments
To Titan and demoniac agencies
That aggrandise earth-nature and disframe:
A cowled fifth-columnist is now thought's guide;
His subtle defeatist murmur slays the faith
And, lodged in the breast or whispering from outside,
A lying inspiration fell and dark
A new order substitutes for the divine.
A silence falls upon the spirit's heights,
From the veiled sanctuary the God retires,
Empty and cold is the chamber of the Bride;
The golden Nimbus now is seen no more,
No longer burns the white spiritual ray
And hushed for ever is the secret Voice.
Then by the Angel of the Vigil Tower
A name is struck from the recording book;
A flame that sang in Heaven sinks quenched and mute;
In ruin ends the epic of a soul.
This is the tragedy of the inner death
When forfeited is the divine element
And only a mind and body live to die.

Explanation

Her hand's deflecting and retarding weight

Is laid on the mystic evolution's curve:

The tortuous line of her deceiving mind

The Gods see not and man is impotent;

Oppressing the God-spark within the soul

She forces back to the beast the human fall.

Here Sri Aurobindo is talking about the devious nature of the terrible ignorance in the making of man. He is personifying the ignorance and void in matter that opposes the climb of the soul towards light and knowledge. "She" here personifies the falsehood in matter that puts her "deflecting and retarding weight" of her hand and deviates the evolutionary Idea of the aspiring soul towards greater knowledge and light. Man is not aware of her dangers and he is open to her attacks. She is the opposite of the brilliant light of the Mother.

Yet in her formidable instinctive mind

She feels the One grow in the heart of Time

And sees the Immortal shine through the human mould.

Alarmed for her rule and full of fear and rage

She prowls around each light that gleams through the dark

Casting its ray from the spirit's lonely tent,

Hoping to enter with fierce stealthy tread

And in the cradle slay the divine Child.

What does she do to the human soul awakened to the divine reality, the divine Child, that wants to climb the heavens staircase?
She hates the awakened soul and would do anything to bring him back to her darkness. Like a wild animal full of fear and rage to inhibit the movements of its
captured pray, she stealthyly plans to destroy the aspiring soul for god knowledge and bliss.

Incalculable are her strength and ruse;

Her touch is a fascination and a death;

She kills her victim with his own delight;

Even Good she makes a hook to drag to Hell.

For her the world runs to its agony.

Often the pilgrim on the Eternal's road

Ill-lit from clouds by the pale moon of Mind,

Or in devious byways wandering alone,

Or lost in deserts where no path is seen,

Falls overpowered by her lion leap,

A conquered captive under her dreadful paws.

Intoxicated by a burning breath

And amorous grown of a destroying mouth,

Once a companion of the sacred Fire,

The mortal perishes to God and Light,

An Adversary governs heart and brain,

A Nature hostile to the Mother-Force.

This is a beautiful explanation of the fall of the aspiring soul. Here this evil, enjoys the death of the aspiring soul. She is cunning and spots the weakness of the aspiring soul. Hits him on the bleeding wounds and weak spots, so that he cannot recover and loses hope of his heavenly destiny.

Often the pilgrim on the Eternal's road

Ill-lit from clouds by the pale moon of Mind,

Or in devious byways wandering alone,

Or lost in deserts where no path is seen,

Falls overpowered by her lion leap,

A conquered captive under her dreadful paws.

Who is the pilgrim on the Eternal's road? The aspiring soul. When the aspiring soul
is not yet connected with higher consciousness completely and when he is on the precarious journey of ill lit knowledge, when his mind is clouded with insufficient faith in the mind or when he feels hopeless and lost, this evil nature mercilessly attacks him with her dreadful paws. Here Sri Aurobindo comparing her to a lion but the distinction is that the wild animal sometimes leaves the pray when not hungry but this evil is nature would never do that. Evil is her nature. She takes pleasure in her victory over the aspiring soul every time he falls to her ruse.

Intoxicated by a burning breath

And amorous grown of a destroying mouth,

Once a companion of the sacred Fire,

The mortal perishes to God and Light,

An Adversary governs heart and brain,

A Nature hostile to the Mother-Force.

Fallen is the aspiring soul from the true bliss and he has fallen to the ruse of falsehood and false pleasures. This line " and amorous grown of a destroying mouth" may mean the aspiring soul once a traveler to the heavenly bliss has fallen to amorous( could mean sexual) pleasures. Once it was a companion of the sacred fire(the yagna or sacrifice the aspiring soul performs), the light of god recedes.
The enemy now governs the actions of the aspiring soul. The soul has fallen to falsehood.

A Nature hostile to the Mother-Force.

Mother-force means the higher super conscious force of the Divine Mother, that helps and prods the aspiring to the divine bliss, light and conciousness. This evil nature which is hostile to the Mother-force, uses all its instruments in its ruse box to inhibit this divine movement.

The self of life yields up its instruments

To Titan and demoniac agencies

That aggrandise earth-nature and disframe:

A cowled fifth-columnist is now thought's guide;

His subtle defeatist murmur slays the faith

And, lodged in the breast or whispering from outside,

A lying inspiration fell and dark

A new order substitutes for the divine.

"The self of life" means the aspiring soul who is the spark of the divine has lives in the body and manifested on earth in contrast to the Self or Atman which is never manifest.

What else does the evil nature( titan an demoniac agencies) do to the yielding soul? Once the aspiring soul allows this demoniac agencies to influence him, they work as "cowled fifth columnist" in his mind. They either possess the mind from the inside or give suggestions from outside in the form of nature thoughts, that destroy his faith in the Divine.  They give him wrong suggestions and show him the wrong path. Now, a new order substitutes the fallen soul, his actions lead to suffering ,pain and darkness.

 

A silence falls upon the spirit's heights,

From the veiled sanctuary the God retires,

Empty and cold is the chamber of the Bride;

The golden Nimbus now is seen no more,

No longer burns the white spiritual ray

And hushed for ever is the secret Voice.

Then by the Angel of the Vigil Tower

A name is struck from the recording book;

A flame that sang in Heaven sinks quenched and mute;

In ruin ends the epic of a soul.

This is the tragedy of the inner death

When forfeited is the divine element

And only a mind and body live to die.

The end result is that even God retires and the aspiring soul (also called a flame that sang in Heaven) sinks quenched and mute. Here Sri Aurobindo explain the fate and dark struggle that the aspiring soul goes through

in his journey to the Divine Mother. There is a danger in very groove, danger hides in every temptation and suggestion of the possess and ill lit mind. 

"When forfeited is the divine element"

What is the Divine element. It is the soul that lives hidden in the body apart from the active mind. When that is soul has given up this struggle to face the adversary, the evolutionary journey and the agent of God has lost the purpose and battle of life. 

 

A fifth columnist is someone who secretly supports and helps the enemies of the country or organization they are in.

cowl - a loose hood or hooded robe (as worn by a monk)

A nimbus is a large grey cloud that brings rain or snow.

The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness Book II, canto xiii

It chilled the heavens with the menace of a face.
A nameless Power, a shadowy Will arose
Immense and alien to our universe.
In the inconceivable Purpose none can gauge
A vast Non-Being robed itself with shape,
The boundless Nescience of the unconscious depths
Covered eternity with nothingness.
A seeking Mind replaced the seeing Soul:
Life grew into a huge and hungry death,
The Spirit's bliss was changed to cosmic pain.
Assuring God's self-cowled neutrality
A mighty opposition conquered Space.
A sovereign ruling falsehood, death and grief,
It pressed its fierce hegemony on the earth;
Disharmonising the original style
Of the architecture of her fate's design,
It falsified the primal cosmic Will
And bound to struggle and dread vicissitudes
The long slow process of the patient Power.
Implanting error in the stuff of things
It made an Ignorance of the all-wise Law;
It baffled the sure touch of life's hid sense,
Kept dumb the intuitive guide in Matter's sleep,
Deformed the insect's instinct and the brute's,
Disfigured man's thought-born humanity.
A shadow fell across the simple Ray:
Obscured was the Truth-light in the cavern heart
That burns unwitnessed in the altar crypt
Behind the still velamen's secrecy
Companioning the Godhead of the shrine.
Thus was the dire antagonist Energy born
Who mimes the eternal Mother's mighty shape
And mocks her luminous infinity
With a grey distorted silhouette in the Night.
Arresting the passion of the climbing soul,
She forced on life a slow and faltering pace;

A vast Non-Being robed itself with shape,

The boundless Nescience of the unconscious depths

What is the cause of all these suffering, falsehood and pain? It is the Non-Being who lives in the unconscious depths of Nescience in matter. 

"The Spirit's bliss was changed to cosmic pain", a profound statement about the condition of sorrow and pain on earth.

"A seeking Mind replaced the seeing Soul"

The mind in ignorance sought to find the truth as the blind leads the blind. In the darkness it needs the help of the guide. The hidden guide is the innermost soul ineffable and intangible. The mind does not have the map to the destination. It tries but has not the clue for directions.

Arresting the passion of the climbing soul,

She forced on life a slow and faltering pace;

Man struggles to know the purpose of life where bliss is not his ordinary condition. To be happy he has to do something exciting. But the ignorance prevents his soul's ambition to know itself and progress and relegates him to suffering.The progress if possible is faltering and slow.

The scholar, the sufi, and the fanatic

Roughly speaking, the political and social aspects of Islam in Pakistan can be seen as existing in and emerging from three distinct sets and clusters of thought. These clusters represent the three variations of political and social Islam that have evolved in this country: modern, popular and conservative.

The modern aspect of Islamic thought in Pakistan has its roots in the ‘Aligarh Movement’ – a nineteenth century effort launched by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan.

His analysis convinced him that the Muslims of India had failed to come to grips with the new zeitgeist emerging from the rise of western colonialism – a power driven by breakthroughs in modern scientific thought and economics, and pragmatic politics based on rational and dispassionate self-interest, all of which stemmed from the many doctrines and socio-political upheavals witnessed in the West during the ‘Age of Reason/Enlightenment.’

Ahmed strived to reinterpret the teachings of Islam so they could be brought in harmony with modern science and philosophy, helping the educated Muslims to continue holding on to their religion but through a rational and enlightened view of life.

Though accused of heresy by conservative Islamic scholars, Ahmed managed to lay the foundations of a modern college in Aligarh in an attempt to draw young Muslims away from the traditional madrassahs towards a place of learning where religious studies would be supplemented by the teaching of modern ‘secular subjects.’

The Aligarh College, that later became a university, soon spawned what came to be known as the ‘Aligarh generation’ – groups of young educated Muslims who would go on to lay the initial foundations of the Pakistan Movement and also become the intellectual engines behind the movement’s central ideological thrust.

Though the Aligarh generation was trained in western law, politics and science, it also held dear Ahmad’s notion that the Muslims of India were a separate cultural community; a thought that was molded into the Two Nation Theory by the All India Muslim League. Much has been contemplated about Jinnah’s ideological orientation, but it is rather clear that the new country was founded on an understanding of Islam that was steeped in Ahmed’s modern Islamic tradition.

The Aligarh tradition that was carried into the corridors of the state and governance of Pakistan pointed towards the new country as being a modern Muslim majority republic, as opposed to a theocratic Islamic State. In fact, the Pakistani state and governments between 1947 and 1977 used (in varying degrees) the above rationale to keep at bay the religious parties’ demand for a theocratic state. But it is also true that the modern Aligarh Muslim mindset was largely an urban phenomenon, associated with the urban middle-class elite of the Punjab and Karachi.

The majority of Muslims in what became Pakistan remained ensconced in the region’s popular variations of Islam. The so-called Barelvi Islam that became the mainstay belief of a majority of Muslims in the subcontinent (from the nineteenth century onwards), was, as a movement, the reassuring enshrinement of the traditional hybrid-Sufism that prevailed among the Muslims due to the long periods of interaction between Sufi Islam and Hinduism.

This hybrid-Sufism, or Barlevi Islam, became the folk religion of the rural peasants, the urban proletariat and the semi-urban petty-bourgeoisie of the country. It incorporated the anti-clergy elements of Sufism, the jurisprudence doctrines of the more flexible Sunni Hanafi fiqh and, as had been the traditional practice of popular folk Islam of the region, fused these with the concept of overt religious reverence of divine concepts and people, and the accommodating forms of worship found in various shades of Hinduism.

The result was an Indian/Pakistani Muslim polity repulsed by the dogma of puritanical strains of the religion, open to the idea of modern reinterpretation of Islamic law, permissive in its sociology, and largely non-political in essence. At the same time, Barlevi Islam is criticised for being willingly embroiled in superstition and doctrinal ‘innovations.’

Though being populist and agrarian in its world view, Barlevi Islam did not negatively react to Ahmed’s modern Islamic reform. What’s more, it was the constant failure of the political exponents of puritanical Islamic thought to penetrate the thick veneer of Barlevi Islam surrounding the rural and urban masses of Pakistan that in turn facilitated the moderate Aligarh Muslim thought and tradition within the Pakistani state to continue deflecting theocratic maneuvers in the country’s overall political polity.

As various forms of Ahmed’s modern and rational Islamic notions continued to dictate the Pakistani state’s (albeit anti-pluralistic) politics, the masses-oriented make-up of Barlevi Islam became the chosen venue of populist politics in Pakistan.

The left-leaning Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) became the first Pakistani political party to set the tone of its manifesto and rhetoric according to the populist imagery of Barlevi Islam, in the process managing to attract the urban working classes and the rural peasantry towards its socialist program. Consequently, not only did the PPP chairman, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, became one of the first major Pakistani political figures to start being seen indulging in rituals associated with Barlevi Islam (such as visiting Sufi shrines), PPP rallies themselves started radiating an aura of the colourful and musical activity found outside many Sufi shrines of the region (such as the dhamal).

The 1970s in Pakistan thus became an era of populist extroversion. With Barlevi Islam adopted as a populist political expression by the ruling PPP. This saw a further hybridisation of Barlevi Islam. This form of expression eventually became the cultural and religious connect between the country’s secular political parties, the working classes and the peasants.

However, as the popular variation of Islam in Pakistan peaked in the 1970s, the modern variation (tied to the Aligarh thought) started to erode. Though the popular variation remained very much the focus of the populist Z A. Bhutto regime, things started to change at state level when after the 1971 East Pakistan debacle, a move was seen afoot in the army towards conservative (and elitist) variations of Islam, especially those advocated by renowned Islamic scholar and Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) chief, Abul Ala Maududi.

The JI was an early advocate of what became to be known as Political Islam – a modern political theory that forwards the ‘historical’ and theological arguments for an evolutionary instatement of an Islamic state (or a modern-day caliphate) run on the dictates of the Shariah as an alternative to the capitalist-democratic system and socialism/communism.

Political Islam first emerged as an opponent of secular/socialist Muslim nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s. After Egypt, Syria and Jordan’s defeat at the hands of Israel in 1967, secular Muslim nationalism started to give way to Political Islam.

Since the theological aspects of Political Islam were opposed to the more populist strains of the faith (such as Barlevi Islam), the JI in Pakistan was eventually successful in converting the urban middle-classes to its cause after these classes stopped resonating with the modern reformist variations of Islam in Pakistan. Thus, the urban bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeoisie became the main players against the populist Bhutto regime during the 1976 PNA movement (led by the JI).

But it wasn’t until the arrival of the Ziaul Haq dictatorship and the anti-Soviet ‘Afghan Jihad’ that Political Islam managed to find state approval. Furthermore, as both the US and Saudi Arabia pumped in billions of dollars of aid so that Zia could construct an effective jihad against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan, the more aggressive and puritanical strains of Islam (such as the Deobandi and Wahahbi) too began finding official sanction.

Conscious of the hold Barlevi Islam had in Pakistan, the Zia regime also attempted to penetrate and regulate Sindh and Punjab’s shrine culture, trying to align Barlevi thought with the clergy and jihad-heavy strains of conservative Islam that he was advocating.

The results were devastating. The corruption emerging from the large amounts of financial aid and state patronage Political Islam was able to enjoy in Pakistan during the Afghan jihad, steadily clipped away the intellectual aspects of the theory, and by 1989 (at the end of the Afghan war), Political Islam had become an empty shell in the hands of various Pakistani intelligence agencies who then filled this shell up with what would eventually surface as sheer fanaticism in the shape of sectarian organisations and phenomenon like the Taliban.

This fanaticism is now not only the militant mainstay of anti-intellectual and fanatic Islamist organisations, but, as a rude social discourse, it is being attracting a large number of the urban middle-classes as well who now seem completely detached from their early moorings towards the modern variations of Islam, and as well as from the faith’s more populist base.

Political Islam suffered from its overindulgence in an unpopular and puritanical theological feast that came attached with the patronage it got from conservative Muslim monarchies and dictatorships. By the early 1990s, it was as good as dead due to the many failures it faced to transform Muslim countries into living Islamic states.

However, it regenerated itself as a far more brutal, literalist and anti-intellectual fascist battle cry (in the shape of ‘Islamism’), which has not only been able to find support among the most desperate sections of the Pakistani society, but, unfortunately, also in the seemingly intellectually bankrupt edifice of urban middle-class Pakistan.

Nadeem F. Paracha is a cultural critic and senior columnist for Dawn Newspaper and Dawn.com.